ACCESS formed in 2018 as an evolution from AUSCCER: the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research. ACCESS builds on AUSCCER’s tradition of research excellence and innovation, as well as its commitment to collegial and collaborative research practices. AUSCCER was founded in 2009 around human geographers’ culturally-inflected work on socio-environmental relations. ARC Laureate and Future Fellowship funding from lead researchers Prof Lesley Head and Prof Chris Gibson, combined with UOW support, saw AUSCCER attain the status of a UOW Research Strength. Since then, growing from a series of externally funded research projects (including a groundbreaking longitudinal study of household sustainability practices led by Prof Gordon Waitt), the Centre had grown, attracting talented new staff and a growing cohort of top quality HDR students. Bound by a collective interest in critical and generative research for progressive social and environmental change, qualitative methodologies and a valuing of diverse knowledges, the group’s research interests have expanded. Reflecting this expansion in size and in the scope of research, the group entered a new chapter; renamed in 2018 as ACCESS—Australian Centre for Culture, Environment, Society and Space—under the Directorship of Prof Pauline McGuirk.
